The imbrication of issues of nation, class, gender, and religion necessitates a critical revision of the so-called secular postcolonial modernity embraced by Indian nationalists, including musicologists. The life and struggle of Roshan Ara Begum — Pakistan’s first and, to date, arguably greatest singer of classical music — is an instructive example of the complex intertwining of agency, resistance, and resignation in Muslim-identified Pakistan and Hindu-identified India.

In light of the US-led “War on Terror” in which the Pakistani state has and continues to play a pivotal role as a frontline ally, this special section of TDR on Performing Pakistani Politics provides an urgent insight into the role of performance as artivist intervention for a citizenry confronting the tide of rising extremism as well as imperialism.

Sext of Saudade , the precursor to Jihad Against Violence , is a collaboration between a Pakistani American woman and an Italian American woman. The play interrogates the contradictions and corroborations within a butch/femme dynamic informed by various identity markers including gender, sexuality, class, and race.

Jihad Against Violence , a collaboration between two Pakistani American women, is a dramatic and poetic depiction of the struggle (emotional, physical, and psychological) against violence of any kind toward women in Pakistani culture.

Madmedea is an avatar of the fabled Scheherezade of the Arabian Nights, a response/challenge to Heiner Müller's texts, and more. “What could constitute an effective interruptive feminist performance to halt, reverse, and challenge the imperialist/patriarchal performances of globalized power and dominance in their postmodern capitalist permutations masquerading as a New World Order? In my performative identity as Muslim/South Asian/Other/Woman, how far can I really go (am permitted to go?) to jam the machinery, to interrupt business-as-usual?”